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How to talk about your weakness in inerview

Job interviews are an unpleasant chore that we all need to go through to get the role of our dreams. It's easy enough to talk about why you want the job and why you're the best person to do it.

But there is one question that everyone dreads and is most likely to trip us all up: What's your biggest weakness?

A job-hunter known as humansof took to Reddit to pose the horrible question to see how other people had answered and was soon inundated with responses.

Among the 1,600 comments were people's own solutions to a question that requires an example that makes you look confident but not arrogant as well as honest, but not too honest that they don't want to hire you.

MsLT answered the question, saying: "What about something like 'I have trouble delegating tasks sometimes. 'I like to do things myself to ensure they're done to my personal standards, but it is something I'm working on."

Another user, Bumpkinsworth, said: 'My wife gave me a good one that kind of compiles all of this (imo):

"I take failure a bit too hard sometimes. Expanding on that, you can elaborate as to how that pushes you to work harder so that you won't make the same mistake twice. Seemed to work well for my last interview."

If you want to add a little humour to your interview, which can ultimately be risky, try following jumper34017's advice.

They say: 'Remain silent, and pull an index card out of your pocket that says "I over-prepare".' Skeetball agreed and replied saying: 'Making the interviewer laugh probably doubles your chances of being hired.'

Another Redditer also used humour to win over the interviewers, saying: 'I had one laugh with the response, "my biggest weakness is not fully knowing my weaknesses all the time".

'They chuckled, a few days later I was offered the job.'

Sefromans replied to the thread with some useful advice: 'Saying something behavioral based like "I don't work well with people" or "I'm soft spoken" is like shooting yourself.

'Give a skills based "weakness" that you can take action to improve upon in the near future.

'Something like "I'm not too familiar with excel at the moment, but I'm planning on taking classes this coming month". Make sure you provide a remedy to the weakness.'

TheNoveltyAccountant recounted a story about a man that was far too honest in his answer: 'I had a man answer with "women" then proceed to tell me he got caught cheating by his wife. 'That was not the right answer.'

Another response never to use comes from DameNisplay: 'Job interviews. I suck at them.'

Showing off a little humour might not always be a bad thing but being rude to the interviewer is definitely a big no-no.

CommonCentral took to Reddit to say: 'My biggest weakness is that I have too many strengths. 'My biggest strength is how humble I am.'

MM_OSHAUGHNESSY said: 'I've always replied with 'I have a hard time choosing between two good decisions.'

'This usually sets them up to ask how you combat this, in which I reply with something along the lines of how I weigh the pros/cons of each choice and then choose the option with the most pros and longer-term benefits.'

xoxsarebear shared her clever way around the trick question, advising people to say: 'I'm overly critical of my work.'

This, she says, 'gives off the impression you're a hard worker, doesn't affect anyone else or your ability to do the job, and makes it seem like you actually care about what you do.'